The Best Actress Oscar dress that cost $100: Joanne Woodward’s gown

Joanne Woodward’s home made strapless green Oscar gown, worn for the Academy Awards.

Long before there was Project Runway, and sewing at home became glamorous, Actress Joanne Woodward flaunted Hollywood convention by making her own Oscar dress.  She was the original recessionista on the red carpet. When  Joanne Woodward, won her best actress Oscar for the film ” The Three Faces of Eve” she wore a strapless green gown with a full skirt that she made for just one hundred dollars.  Ms. Woodward claimed it took her two weeks to make the dress.  The green taffeta dress was of her own design according to the actress. ” I spent one hundred dollars on the material, designed the dress, and worked on it for two weeks,” the Oscar winner told the press.

Joanne Woodward had the best Oscar accessory, her husband Paul Newman.

The story goes that when a Georgia museum asked for the dress so that they could put it on display, Ms. Woodward didn’t want to give it up.  “I worked on it for two weeks,” said Best Actress winner Ms. Woodward. “I’m almost as proud of that dress as I am of my Oscar.”  Of course, not everyone in Hollywood was so proud of the homemade Oscar dress.  Some of Hollywood’s old guard were downright offended by the garment, including Mommie Dearest, Joan Crawford.  She took a verbal wire coat hanger to Ms. Woodward, decrying her frugality.  “Joanne Woodward,” she declared, ”is setting the cause of Hollywood glamour back 20 years by making her own clothes.”

This was the last time, and the only time, a Best Actress winner appeared at the Academy Awards in a dress of her own making. In 1966,  The Telegraph reports that Julie Christie wore a hand-sewn  gold column dress to the Oscars, but the gold dress was made by a friend of hers.

Readers, what do you think of Joanne’s dress? I think it looked beautiful on her, and she had the best accessory at the Governor’s Ball, actor Paul Newman.